Normally we do not dip too much into the console based arena of things, but today's item up for review is a much needed one. If you own a Nintendo Gameboy Advanced, you may notice one major lacking aspect of it, light. It's a downfall on this great portable item, as I've spent a good number of hours hacking and slashing on this little unit when away from the computer.

So a few months back, a fellow over at TritonLabs (formerly known as portablemonopoly.com) decided to research a method to add light to the tiny unit without using an external light. Lots of people thought he was crazy or that this process was too hard to accomplish. He eventually developed a test model which shut a lot of people up. Only issue was, getting this model out available to the public. I thought this was a neat idea, especially since it involved hacking up my GBA and adding a nice frontlight to it.

So on May 10th, the Afterburner units started to ship. I got mine about 2 weeks later in the mail. I didn't bother asking Adam, the creator of the light for a pre-release model for review/testing. I think he got enough of those from the 10 billion GBA fan sites online. I rather have the final consumer version, kind of see what the normal folks get in the mail.

Here's what you receive in your kit:

Afterburner light

1FT red/black single strand wire

1 Pot

1 anti-reflective film

1 Plastic card

1 44ohm resistor

In addition to what is included, you're going to need a soldering iron with some solder. I used a 15W unit, strong enough to get the wires on without burning a hole through the PCB. A tri-wing screwdriver or a 1/16" mini screwdriver. You'll see later on why I didn't use either of them. A wire stripper is useful, but not necessary. Exacto knife and a metal filer or sand paper.

Please bear in mind, this is not exactly an easy mod job for the beginner. It involves cutting pieces out of the GBA and soldering. But then again, I'm mainly talking to GT mod freaks so this probably won't mean jack to you.